1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an equalizer and a related method, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a related method for combining the equalizer with a phase error corrector to improve the performance of the equalizer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In communication systems, inter-symbol interference (ISI) is a common phenomenon. The primary cause of ISI is multipath propagation. Hence, an equalizer is typically adopted in signal receivers for reducing effects resulted from multipath propagation during signal transmission.
When processing complex signals (such as a VSB signal) by adopting the equalizer, the performance of the equalizer will be restricted by the phase error existing between the signals of the equalizer if only a single equalizer is used for equalizing the real-part component of the complex signal. In addition, although the phase error of the signals processed by the equalizer is adjusted by adopting a phase error corrector, the performance of the equalizer may be poor since the phase error corrector only has a one-dimensional input (i.e., the real-part component). Hence, how to improve the performance of the equalizer has become one of the important topics of the field.